Google may reduce the visibility of a product page if the item for sale is listed as out of stock on the retailer’s website.
This is stated by Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller during a recent Google Search Central SEO office-hours hangout.
A question is submitted by an ecommerce store owner asking if search rankings for transactional keywords could be negatively impacted if the products sell out.
Mueller says, in theory, Google could reduce visibility for product pages with out of stock items.
However, that doesn’t have to be the case. Read his full response in the section below.
Google Treats Out Of Stock Products As Soft 404s
Mueller doesn’t rule out the possibility of out of stock products seeing reduced visibility in search results.
He explains Google treats ‘out of stock’ as a soft 404 error:
“Out of stock – it’s possible. That’s kind of simplified like that. I think there are multiple things that come into play when it comes to products themselves in that they can be shown as a normal search result.
They can also be shown as an organic shopping result as well. If something is out of stock, I believe the organic shopping result might not be shown – I’m not 100% sure.